John Billimek, PhD, Recognized for Humanitarian Medical Service in Peru

“Today was an incredible day,” wrote John Billimek, PhD, in 2007 for a blog about his experience helping over 1,000 patients get medical care in Ayacucho, high in the Andes Mountains of Peru. In the blog, he talks about six children having surgery to repair their cleft lips and palates, including a 3-year-old boy named Leandro.

That was one of eight trips to Peru for Billimek, an associate professor and vice chair of academic affairs in UC Irvine’s Department of Family Medicine.

Since 2003, he has worked with Ayacucho Mission, a nonprofit organization that annually sends volunteers to Peru for a two-week campaign delivering free medical care to impoverished, indigenous people in Ayacucho and its surrounding villages.

“Ayacucho was an epicenter of political violence from the Sendero Luminoso in the 1980s and ’90s and was left with minimal medical infrastructure for the decades that followed,” he explains. From 2007 to 2019, Billimek served as Ayacucho Mission’s director of volunteer services.

In honor of the nonprofit’s medical outreach and educational campaigns, in March 2026, Billimek was granted a Congressional Recognition for Humanitarian Medical Service by the Congress of the Republic of Peru, along with his colleagues from the Peruvian American Medical Society.

Managing Medical Missions

Billimek was a graduate student when he first started volunteering with the Ayacucho Mission. Initially, he was tasked with moving supplies and helping patients find their way to the various medical services offered. Services included hernia repair, orthopedics, gynecology and urology care, pacemaker implants and management, and mental health services.

Billimek quickly realized some of the volunteers were not sure how best to help. “I started suggesting tasks for people,” he says, “and before I knew it, I was joining the meetings with the mission leaders, helping with training and logistics for the whole team of volunteers.”

This led to his role as director of volunteer services, helping recruit, select and train the team of volunteers every year, as well as setting up the infrastructure for each campaign.

“On the training side, our clinicians would offer workshops for local health professionals on topics like evidence-based practice, clinical innovations and surgical techniques, and they would work alongside local physicians, nurses and pharmacists to learn from each other,” he says. “We always made sure to link our patients to a local clinician or resource who could continue to monitor things and ensure adequate supplies and medications to sustain their care plan.”

Cesar Aranguri, MD, a Southern California cardiologist, joined Ayacucho Mission the same year Billimek did and later became the medical director. “He significantly expanded our outpatient clinical footprint to care for thousands of patients each year with acute and chronic health issues from diabetes to parasites,” says Billimek. “We’d also visit orphanages, senior homes, a program for children with developmental disabilities and remote village centers in the surrounding mountains to offer medical support.”

A part of the job Billimek didn’t anticipate was providing emotional support for volunteers overwhelmed by the situations they encountered. “They felt that no matter what they did, it would never be enough,” he says. “Spending some time with a volunteer to unpack what they were going through often led to them finding one little thing they could do to make a difference that day, and then ultimately building on that to create a bigger impact by the end of the campaign.”

Boosting Impact & Engagement

Listening to others and boosting impact to help improve people’s lives is also central to Billimek’s work at UC Irvine, where he leads the HELIOS lab (Healthcare Energized through Listening, Investigation, Opportunities and Services).

“I learned [in Peru] that you can’t do it all yourself, and that sometimes your biggest impact is helping someone else see what they can do to help,” he says. “I’ve brought this perspective home with me, and it has been critical to getting students involved in research, service and leadership in our HELIOS lab here at UC Irvine.”

Billimek also stresses the importance of community engagement. “My experiences in Peru taught me just how far listening will get you when working with the community,” he says. “It is so rare that my first ideas about what the community needs, or what they are capable of, are actually correct. When you focus on listening and coming alongside the local community, your impact multiplies.”

Learn more about Ayacucho Mission and the other campaigns offered through the Peruvian-American Medical Society and how to get involved. Or, to help build a better health system for medically under-resourced communities here in Southern California, consider collaborating with the HELIOS lab as a clinician, community partner, researcher or student.

— Shani Murray